A lot of people wishing to build a website for their business often consider search engine optimisation (SEO) after designing it not realizing that it should instead be built into the process of web design. Considering SEO after you have developed your website makes it deficient in both the digital marketing and SEO front. Your website may well be attractive and appealing to the eye but if both keyword and metadata optimisation are not incorporated during the design phase, you will be operating on a shaky foundation.

Many business owners make the error of rushing to develop their website without implementing an SEO strategy during the design phase and when they go to incorporate it later, they often realise that they have gone and wasted a lot of time, money and resources optimising their web pages for the wrong keyword phrases. Therefore to properly exploit SEO techniques, a website owner must consider keyword optimisation during the design phase of the website build. Below are some critical aspects of SEO that should be considered during the design phase of a website as well as the importance of hiring an SEO expert when looking to implement advanced SEO optimisation strategies to help remove your website from Google’s sandbox.

Critical SEO Aspects of Website Design

Your website will be SEO-friendly if it allows a particular search engine to read and explore pages across the site. In order to improve your website’s visibility in the search engine results pages, you must first ensure that all relevant search engines can effectively crawl and analyse the content you place on it. In order to ensure that your website is SEO-friendly, your website design requires a well-thought-out approach and meticulous planning. You should create your website on a sturdy digital marketing plan with a clear value proposition and business model.

Domain

As the website owner, you will have the obligation of coming up with your preferred domain name(s). There are basically three options when it comes to choosing the most effective domain name for your website. The first option is to employ an ‘exact match domain’ (EMD). Before you can decide on an EMD you will need to conduct some thorough keyword research for your target keyword phrase so that you can identify those phrases that have the greatest number of monthly search volumes. An EMD is where your domain name actually includes your targeted keyword phrases. For example, if your objective is to rank your website for the keyword phrase ‘create web design’ then an EMD would be www.createwebsitedesign.com.au The advantage of having an EMD is that the domain will rank quicker if you apply an advanced SEO campaign. If your EMD is not available your next option is a ‘partial match domain’ (PMD). A PMD is a domain that contains at least one of your targeted keyword phrases. For example, if we couldn’t secure the full keyword phrase ‘create web design’ then a PMD may be www.alphawebdesign.com The advantage of a PMD is that you can introduce your brand into the domain in addition to your keyword phrases. The third option for your domain is to implement a ‘branded domain’. The benefit of a creating a branded domain is that you can build some real value over a number of years for your brand name by ranking it number one for relevant keyword phrases. There are a number of techniques to introduce your keyword phrases into the various URLs on your website.

You should ensure that your preferred domain is sensible and most importantly it should relate to your niche. It is also important to ensure that if you engage an SEO consultant that they ensure that all sub-domains and variations correctly point to your main website. This can easily be performed through Google’s Search Console.

Content Management System (CMS) and Hosting

The CMS that you opt to use in your business will greatly influence the success and effectiveness of your website. You should be able to rely on your preferred SEO expert to propose the best option to use. It is extremely important to select the most appropriate CMS based on your particular circumstance, for example, if your website is for a standard offline business then WordPress is highly recommended by most SEO agencies.

The majority of people believe that WordPress is the ultimate and most user-friendly of the common CMS resources. Deservingly so. WordPress can be installed via the cPanel in your respective hosting account. Simply go to the ‘Autoinstallers’ section of the cPanel dashboard and click on the WordPress icon.

WordPress needs the identical details as other open source systems, however, this is beautifully concealed behind two phases of installation. The first phase is the generation of a config.php file (the data regarding the database, access requirements including username and password, database host etc.). As soon as this is carried out, there’s simply one mouse click for the setup of WordPress. If you possess a config.php file prepared (from your former installation or if you manually developed it) there is zero requirement to carry out the primary step. The installer instantly browses the file and directs you to config.php file generation only if it is not available.

Magento possesses the characteristic of being the ultimate CMS for e-commerce websites. If you are looking for a complimentary system then you can’t go pass Magento Community Edition. You are able to set up, modify or employ this version of Magento anyway you want. If you have access to a Magento expert at hand, it’s conceivable to turbocharge the Magento code and boost the e-commerce business website with fresh and preferred capabilities by setting up Magento extensions. These extensions are offered via Magento Connect marketplace. Because it’s an open source strategy, there’s a sizable community of web developers all over the world dealing with it daily, guaranteeing the e-commerce system is current, safe and quick. Assistance is easily accessible.

Hosting

Choosing the right hosting provider is critical from an SEO perspective. The initial thing to think about is the region in which the host is situated. With regard to SEO applications, it’s ideal if it resides in the identical country you’re aiming to service and rank in. Google apparently regards websites more appropriate for a specific location if they are similarly hosted there.

Furthermore, if you focus on your unique country, it’s more desirable to select a local hosting service provider. In this situation, it may be less complicated for you to handle any judicial matters should these emerge. In addition to that, a proximate host will be easier to get in touch with.

Uptime Guarantee

The guaranteed uptime that you are going to want from your host is 99,5%. This is the period of time the server is on and operating (apart from planned maintenance), and customers and internet search engine can connect to it without issue.

The reason this is imperative from an SEO point of view is that it is a well-known fact that search engines like Google consider a website’s speed and ease of access when placing it in the search engine result pages.

Accessibility

It is essential to ensure that your website’s content is presented in a simple way that Google understands. There are various tools and techniques that your SEO consultant can use to make the job of Google’s search bot so much easier. One such technique involves the use of structured data markup which presents your site’s information to the search bot when it arrives at your site instead of relying on the search bot to try and understand and extract the correct information from your site. One of the first steps towards making your website more SEO-friendly is ensuring that a search engine can effectively crawl all of the relevant pages on the site and understand each of them fully.

Links

In order to index the content that appears on your homepage to other pages, you will need to build internal links that will enable the search engine to crawl. There are various tools like XML sitemaps and other search engine directives that help search engines crawl your website and discern new pages. Your expert SEO company will make use of all the necessary tools to ensure that your website is properly linked thus enabling a search engine to crawl through it easily.

Another important linking strategy is to create 2-5 outbound links to other authoritative websites. Google will value your website more if it knows that you are providing added value and a better user experience by forwarding users to other high domain authority websites that are related to your niche.

Responsive Design

In the past, SEO use to focus solely on link-building and keywords but this is different today as the whole user experience is considered in ranking websites. Search engines are considering the entire user experience in ranking websites in their search results. Furthermore, you must ensure that the company that you have contracted to come up with an optimised website design makes it mobile-friendly. A company that does not produce a mobile-friendly website design will find it hard to achieve optimal rankings in the mobile-only index. A large number of people are browsing the web on their mobile devices like tablets and smartphones and Google and other search engines are penalising websites that do not deliver a responsive website.

User Experience

Even though your website design should be developed with SEO in mind, it is important that the user remains the point of focus and receives high priority. Prioritising your users’ experience is critical because at the end of the day they are the people who will click on your links and purchase the things you have on offer. In order to achieve the highest level of user experience optimisation, you should ensure that your web builder takes into account the user experience in every design decision on each page of your site.

Importance of Seeking an SEO Expert When Creating a Website

If you wish to get the best and most optimised website design, you must seek out an experienced SEO expert to help with building your site. There are a number of benefits for hiring an SEO expert especially when it comes to website optimisation, which is a must for any business or individual in order to rank higher in search engine results. Your website will benefit from increased exposure as well as brand awareness, which helps you leverage your investment towards the website and directly contributes to your bottom-line. A lot of online buyers make several website searches online before they make their final decision to buy. If your website is not found anywhere on the internet, you are missing out on a lot of business. Website optimisation helps in improving Google rankings and helps increase the number of visitors to the site as well as leads.

SEO experts help in bringing targeted website traffic to your site thus bring paying customers to you. These experts will also market your site in a cost effective manner resulting in a greater return on your investment as compared to using other mediums of advertising. Search engines rely on “spiders” to scour the website and index it. The SEO expert has the expertise and knowledge to give search engines what they want in order to help your site rank higher in their search results.

Conclusion

All of the above are some of the critical SEO aspects of website design that you ought to adhere to in order to make your site great. There are also some reasons why you should seek out an SEO expert when you need to have your website created. Following all the above will ensure that you get the best and most optimised website design that will yield a higher return on your investment.